


I Am Not A Category

by DefaltManifesto



Series: 30 Day Song Lyric Challenge [27]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, First Kiss, Gender Issues, Genderqueer Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:28:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefaltManifesto/pseuds/DefaltManifesto
Summary: Forrest is pretty sure he’s a boy. Mostly.





	I Am Not A Category

**Author's Note:**

> SO Soleil and Forrest is just such an OTP of mine and so I was super pumped about writing this one. I made Hinoka Forrest's mother so this follows the Revelations path obvs. 
> 
> Today's fic is from the following lyric from Inspector of Inspectors by Driftless Pony Club: 
> 
> "I don't know what I am, what I am/but I am not a category"
> 
> I feel like I didn't do this concept justice - if you want to see me actually go into gender issues, specifically genderqueer characters with a lot more finesse, please give my series Locked Out a read. The third fic in that series deals more specifically with genderqueer issues and coming to terms with that identity. This one doesn't totally do it justice I don't think? But I still loved writing it.

Forrest is pretty sure he’s a boy. Mostly. He’s just a boy who likes dresses and necklaces and nail polish.

 

-.-

 

His father says boys don’t dress that way. So does pretty much everyone else and Forrest thinks they’re all equally ridiculous because hello, he’s a boy and he dresses this way. It’s not until he turns ten that his mother, Hinoka, sits him down and explains that sometimes people who are born as one gender identify as another. Forrest takes the information and mulls it over when she leaves.

When she returns a year later, and only a few days older, Forrest has an answer for her.

“I’m a boy,” he says. “I just like dressing in things that look nice.”

“Alright but if anything changes, you’ll tell me, right?”

“Obviously,” he says with a teasing smile.

           

-.-

 

It works for a while. The label of boy and then man feels comfortable just like the clothes do. It’s annoying when people perceive him one way, or insist he must identify this or that way, but he chalks it up to being their problem not his. He has a feeling that he also inherited an obscene amount of self-confidence from his father as well as his magic skills. It comes in handy though.

It isn’t until he meets Soleil that things…change.

He’s always been attracted to women. It goes in line with his general fondness for pretty things and women are the most beautiful of people in his mind. He supposes some men can be beautiful – there is Shigure after all. Forrest would kill for those damn cheekbones and hips. But Soleil…she leaves him breathless.

She exists, as he does, in a nebulous world when it comes to her gender. She has long hair, but it’s usually a mess and her bulky clothes look like hand-me-downs from Benny the way they hang on her. In the right light, she could pass for a feminine man even with her long hair. Her ability to exist in either space, more elegantly than Forrest ever could, makes her beautiful in a way Forrest isn’t sure of how to put into words.

The more time he spends with her, the more in love he finds himself being. Still, part of him worries. Soleil is attracted to both genders sure, but it’s no secret she prefers women a little more than men and he worries that perhaps she would only return his affections because she sees him as something he’s not. That thought keeps his words at bay.

 

-.-

 

That strategy doesn’t succeed. He blurts everything out, the fact that he’s in love, the fact that he’s worried she doesn’t see him as a man, the fact that she’s just _so god damned beautiful_ after an intense battle. Soleil just laughs and kisses him.

"I love you too, idiot,” she says. She brushes a red curl away from his face and cups his cheek. “And I don’t see you as a woman. You’re _you_ Forrest, a man who is also beautiful and who makes me laugh and tries to help me even when I’m a lost cause. That’s all I need and want. I don’t want a woman, I want you.”

Forrest is so relieved he cries. Soleil kisses him after.

 

-.-

           

Forrest is starting to wonder if being seen as a woman is such a bad thing. He doesn’t have the body dysphoria Hinoka told him most transgender people experience, but sometimes when Soleil’s fingers caress his back or side in the afterglow of sex, he wonders what it would be like if she called him by different pronouns.

He gets up the courage to ask her a few months later.

“Not all the time? Just…maybe sometimes? When we’re alone,” Forrest says. “I want to test it out…”

Again, he expects rejection. Again, Soleil defies his expectations and doesn’t question it or demand answers he doesn’t have.

 

-.-

 

The first time she uses it, it’s when they’re fucking. She’s on top, rolling her hips in a slow grind as she rides his cock and undoes his control with one of her sweet kisses while gripping his jaw hard enough to hurt. He gasps a warning that he’s close to coming and she pulls back.

“Good girl,” she says, easy as anything. She slides off her and she cries out at the sudden loss of heat and wet. “Make me come first.”

Soleil kisses her again and sinks back down. Forrest reaches a hand down to get her fingers on Soleil’s clit and only just manages to make Soleil come first before hurtling over the edge after her. Soleil lays out on top of her for a long time after. She presses soft kisses to her neck and chest and lips and Forrest thinks about what she’d said.

 

-.-

 

Sometimes, they go out as women. Forrest keeps her already high voice higher and they go out to dinner in a town as two ladies and it feels just as natural as when they go as a man and a woman. Forrest isn’t sure what to do with this information. He’s fairly certain he’s not a woman, but he likes being perceived as one when the mood strikes and he likes that Soleil’s treatment of him doesn’t change either way.

           

 

-.-

 

Forrest knows he’s not a man or a woman. He’s both and neither. He’s a man that loves to look beautiful and a woman who loves to wrestle with her girlfriend and a person who loves his family and friends.

That’s enough for him.


End file.
